Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1916 (Heft 48))

must, Nadelman varies his treatment to the material as well as to the motive inherent in the
subject. You may not warm to the motive; it may even antagonize you. But, for the moment,
likes or dislikes may be discarded. It is the technical virtuosity per se that I am considering.
There is, for example, a marble head, “La Mysterieuse.” The treatment of its surfaces
is of quite extraordinary refinement; the more fascinating that it is apparently so simple, and
the more irresistible because it veils an unmistakable weight and volume of form.
Correspondingly choice is a small bronze head. Then, there are three standing bronzes
of nudes, in which, instead of a feeling of intense calm, the expression is of vibrant, elastic
movement. In one case the movement is drawn up from the feet to the head in an intensity of
contraction; in the others, it is diffused throughout the figure in an expansive coquetry.
But in each case, the plasticity of the surfaces, wedded to a beautiful patina, stimulates
one’s sensations to a very high degree of sensitiveness.
In these three statuettes Nadelman has assumed for purposes of expression the liberty to
establish his own relations between the parts of his figure. The height of one of them, for
instance, is about twelve times the dimensions of the head. Like El Greco and others, he is for
the moment less concerned with anatomical averages and standards than with enhancing the
expressiveness.
Among the notable features of these bronzes is the expressiveness yielded by the open
spaces between the limbs. Here, however, the union of the open and full spaces in an ensemble
of feeling has the appearance of spontaneity.
But, in some later pieces, done in wood and plaster since his arrival in this country, the
principle is applied with increasing obviousness. It is somewhat thrust into notice in two
wooden recumbent nudes, and is accompanied by a more arbitrary treatment of form. An
arm, for example, has lost its individual character and become a loop to connect the hand with
the shoulder.
Finally, in “A Young Man with Hat,” plaster, the device is starkly presented and there
is little or no suggestion of the character of form.
It is true that the feeling of form is preserved; and it is still plastically expressed. But
in such a way that our sensations are stimulated less by the qualities of the form than by the
quality of the feeling. And it seems to me that it is precisely in the matter of feeling that
Nadelman has least that is worth while to offer. I am not speaking now of the feeling of
virtuosity, but the feeling that impels the whole conception.
Nadelman says in his foreword: “Independently of what a work of plastic art represents,
it is solely by its plasticity that it speaks to us.” Certainly the plasticity is the means; but the
means to what? It speaks to us, assuredly; but what has it got to say? Beyond the fineness of
the phraseology, what is there of thought and feeling?
In Nadelman’s work, little of much account; and, in the case of this sexless caricature of
a boy-girl, uniting the sophisticated insipidities of both periods of mental and emotional im-
maturity, nothing, to myself at any rate, but what seems disagreeable and, of more importance
what is as foolish as it is futile.
Henry J. McBride in the “N. Y. Sun”:
One swift glance at the sculptures of Eli Nadelman, now exposed in the gallery of the
Photo-Secession, reveals that their author is a man of talent. It is not a talent that will be ap-
preciated or even understood by Mr. Joseph Pennell, who says he doesn’t understand modern
art and considers it indecent. It will be readily apparent, however, to younger, less prejudiced
observers and to those with a less keen scent for immorality.
Mr. Nadelman is himself a young man, and it is almost too soon to weigh his powers for
uplift or downpull in the world of art, but it is clear that his faculties are the sort that influence
others. What he does will be looked at. His work, whether you like it or not, forces your
consideration. This is the essential faculty an artist must have. If Mr. Nadelman lives and
is permitted to work out his special tasks in conditions that are fairly sympathetic (which is
always a matter of luck, for the most sensitive artists are the least fitted to combat a repellant en-
vironment) there is no question but that he will be an influence of the future to be reckoned with.
As things are there is more danger that he will be overpraised by the young contemporaries
who bring garlands to those who succeed in expressing the spirit of the time, in quantities pro-
portionate to the abuse that is heaped upon them by the bigots, than that he will be harmed by
the critics, of which class I for the nonce am not one.

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